Cheat Sheet for Open Chat with Jeff Rosen on New Requirements for 2015

Written by Thomsen Young and you can follow him @

For those of you that missed out, Jeff Rosen, General Counsel for Convo, hosted “Open Chat with Jeff: New Personal Information Requirements to Use VRS” on Friday, June 19th, 2015 at 2pm (EST). The purpose of this open conversation was to inform the public that the FCC will be implementing two new requirements in order for you to obtain VRS services: first, you will have to give your last four (4) numbers of your SSN, and secondly, you will have to give your date of birth.

The entire open chat is over an hour long. Throughout the open chat, there were eight questions asked including those of Sheri Fainha. Of the eight questions, six were either questions asked via Facebook or Twitter. The other two were Convo VideoMail questions. The overall summary of the conversation is that, yes, the new requirements will be enforced and you will have to give your last four digits of your SSN and you will also have to give your date of birth if you want to start and/or continue your VRS services.

What is TRS USER REGISTRATION DATABASE? TRS user registration database (TRS-URD) which incorporates a centralized eligibility verification requirement to ensure accurate registration and verification of users, to achieve more effective fraud and abuse prevention, and to allow the Commission to know, for the first time, the number of individuals that actually use VRS. Details here if you want to read way too much information!

While watching the “Open Chat with Jeff: New Personal Information Requirements to Use VRS”, it was disappointing with the lack of access for all those who were or wanted to be involved. There was absolutely no audio; if there was it was extremely barely audible. Even twelve hours after it went live streaming there’s still no captions or transcripts of the conversation. What is even more surprising is that Convo nor the FCC provided no support to have a live captioner throughout the conversation and we know that funding is not an issue. Even at some moments, it was difficult to see some of the responses since the camera was so far away from the panelist themselves. Imagine people who are deaf that have poor vision and are trying to pay attention to the conversation. There’s no reason for the lack of accessibility. Convo and FCC, please think ahead of time and have everything in place. We even recommend hiring DHN!

Nevertheless, we provided some shortcuts for you so you don’t have to watch the whole thing and get to the important stuff.

Here’s the first question: (note click on the picture to watch the video)

Second question:

Third question:

Fourth question:

First video question:

Second video question:

Fifth question:

Sixth question:

For those of you who want to watch the entire video, feel free to watch it below: